Poor handling led to BJP rout in K'taka: Advani

BJP patriarch LK Advani has blamed the party's "opportunistic handling" of the Karnataka crisis for its debacle in the state assembly polls.

At a time when many in BJP believe that it was the ouster of former chief inister BS Yeddyurappa (BSY) that led to the BJP's rout, the party patriarch differs. For Advani, the BJP's tolerance of BSY for long led to the debacle.

"When it became apparent that he was unabashedly indulging in corruption, if the party had immediately taken firm action, the course of events would have been quite different," Advani blogged on Sunday.

"But for several months, frantic efforts went on somehow to keep placating him by condoning his peccadilloes. The justification was that if the party did not adopt such a 'pragmatic' approach, we would lose the only government that we had in the south."

Many see Advani's anger as a sign of differences within the BJP.

For, Advani is believed to have been instrumental in the BJP being unable to retain BSY, as key Advani loyalist Ananth Kumar and BSY did not see eye to eye.

Advani claimed in his blog that people had a "different" yardstick for the BJP.

"We must realize that the yardstick by which the people judge the BJP is not the same as that by which they judge other parties! Because of the high expectations we have aroused, even minor indiscretions can prove costly. And our response to the Karnataka crisis was not at all a minor indiscretion. I have maintained that our handling of Karnataka has been absolutely opportunistic."